On February 9, 2019 at 18:49, davidcasemore said...
There is another reason for the high cost - the uninsured who use the ER because they are now so sick from being untreated for something that would have been easily treatable had they had health insurance to go see a doctor. Now they are on death's door and the rest of us have to pick up the cost.
True. But you miss an important part, when you give it away for free you flood the system with people who are going for everything. So if they had "free" health care, the people who truly needed it will get overlooked by the same under performing population who don't have health care now. I say under performing but I haven't found it difficult to maintain a job since I was 19 with medical coverage. I understand there are people with mental health and physical issues that this isn't as easy but this isn't certainly the norm.
This is why universal health care is needed. You can call it Socialism, Medicare-for-All, Kenyan Care, Single-Payer - it doesn't matter. The two biggest costs to our current health care scheme are the uninsured and the bureaucratic costs involved in processing the insurance claims. These go away with universal coverage. Other factors are the student loans which force doctors to have to charge so much, the pharmaceutical industry (and their false claims about R&D which is actually done for them by our universities), as well as American's wanting to have an MRI facility on every corner. Oh, and the cost of end-of-life care where 90% of your health care costs are spent in the last couple of years of your life. We treat our pets better - Let Granny Go!
Umm the reason why schooling cost so high is directly related to the government infusing money into the higher education system. This isn't just for doctors but for all higher education. A big reason why medical costs what it does is due to the massive amounts of lawsuits filed every day across the country. Insurance costs are through the roof.
Also true that the uninsured are crushing the system. But to my point above, simply by paying for the health care of everyone, we will also crush the system with the same people who never went, going every day for the simplest shit.
The majority of the problems today are directly related to what we are putting into our bodies. If we educated people, we would dramatically reduce the most common issues with our health today. The only caveat to this is making the switch from treating to prevention costs. Meaning, the amount of insulin we issue as a society is staggering! All covered by the health care system. Guess what, if we eat better we can eliminate people currently taking insulin and prevent future diagnosis. The only two problems with this ideology. First people are lazy and aren't willing to make changes until it's too late or after they receive a bad diagnosis. The second is we are taking away from the doctors who are enjoying their comfortable life treating patients. One of my favorite quotes (from a socialist BTW), “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
